This book is about how every age reinvented the idea of Europe in the mirror of its own identity. I shall bring "Europe" into focus as a cultural construction and argue that it cannot be regarded as a self-evident entity: it is an idea as much as a reality. Europe, I shall be arguing, is a contested concept and it was in adversity that it became a self-conscious idea. As the central and organising metaphor of a complex civilisation, the European idea expresses our culture's struggle with its contradictions and conflicts.